The City-Girl Bride

‘Take a look outside,’ Finn invited her, going to open the front door.

Whilst they had been arguing the afternoon had darkened into dusk, but it wasn’t the darkness that made Maggie gasp in disbelief as she stared out of the open door, her chagrin that he hadn’t, after all, been speaking out of a desire to keep her with him obliterated by the sight that greeted her disbelieving gaze. Whilst they had been arguing dusk wasn’t the only thing that had fallen. Everything was covered in a thick blanket of snow—snow that was still falling, driven by a strong and very cold wind, so that in the corners of the building it was already forming peaked drifts. The side of her car was a mask of white, only the double row of trees marking where the drive lay.

Maggie gulped and looked at Finn.

‘It probably looks worse than it is. Once I get to the main road…’

‘No way,’ Finn told her, shaking his head. ‘They were giving out blizzard warnings earlier, urging people not to travel. These country roads—even the A roads,’ he added dryly, ‘are subject to heavy drifting. I’d have second thoughts about driving in this in the Land Rover, and there’s no way I’m going to let you take the risk of going out in it.’

‘There were blizzard warnings?’ Maggie demanded, glowering at him. ‘Why on earth didn’t you say something…tell me?’

That was a question Finn had been asking himself from the moment he had seen her arrive. And one he had still found no satisfactory answer to—at least not one which would satisfy any logical criteria! ‘You didn’t give me much chance,’ he pointed out. ‘You were determined to say your piece, and…’

Maggie shook her head in disbelief. ‘Now what am I going to do?’

‘There’s only one thing you can do,’ Finn told her. ‘You’ll have to spend the night here.’

Maggie gritted her teeth against her ire and exasperation.

‘What kind of county is this?’ she demanded irritably. Its extraordinarily changeable weather conditions had to be peculiar to the area; there had certainly been nothing on her car radio as she had driven west to warn her of impending blizzard conditions! Impassable fords, snow in November. ‘That’s twice now we’ve been marooned together. You’d never get anything like this happening in London,’ she told Finn irritably as she surveyed the inhospitable not to say downright dangerous arctic scene in front of her.

As the wind twisted blowing an icy sheet of snow over her she stepped back into the warmth of the house. Already her face and hands were stinging from the cold.

‘What about the alpaca?’ she asked Finn anxiously. ‘Will they be all right?’

Finn busied himself closing the door before answering her. He didn’t want her to guess that he was smiling. ‘The alpaca will be fine,’ he assured her, keeping his face as straight as he could. ‘They’re used to the cold.’

‘But the little ones? The babies?’ Maggie protested, remembering the young animals she had seen with their mothers.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Finn repeated.

She was looking at the closed door almost as though she was going to rush through it and check on the animals herself, which might prove rather embarrassing, seeing as they were all tucked up safely in a specially enclosed field complete with protective bales of hay and an open barn to go into for shelter. He and Shane had moved them there only this morning, after hearing the weather forecast. The same forecast he had omitted to mention to Maggie!

‘In your grandmother’s time there would have been deer in the park,’ he told Maggie, intending to distract her. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting her. She must know qu

ite a lot about the recent history of the house if she lived here. The two sons of the family who would have owned it at that time were both killed during the War, and the estate then passed to a second cousin who already owned a much larger estate in Scotland.’

‘What do you mean, you’re looking forward to meeting my grandmother?’ Maggie interrupted him ominously. ‘I’ve already told you, she won’t be coming here.’

There was a long pause before Finn asked her with deliberate emphasis, ‘Are you really prepared to do that, Maggie? Let me ask you something. If it were anyone else but me offering you a lease on the Dower House would you refuse it?’

Maggie bit her lip.

‘I don’t want to discuss the subject any longer,’ she told him sharply, adding in a very formal and grand voice, ‘If you would just direct me to my room?’ Pointedly she lifted her eyebrows and looked at Finn.

‘Your room. Mmm…Unfortunately, there’s a slight problem. As yet there is only one functional bedroom…’

‘One bedroom?’ Maggie repeated warily.

Soft brown eyes clashed with winter-blue.

‘One bedroom,’ Finn agreed softly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ONE bedroom!

And they had spent what was left of the fast-fading daylight arguing about which of them was going to occupy it—or rather which of them was going to make the noble gesture of sleeping in the drawing room on one of its two sofas.